Podcast:

#196: Which Time Frame Chart Should You Trade?

In this video:

00:32 – Choosing the best time frame chart for you

01:15 - The merits of various time frame charts

02:52 – Trading the Weekly charts

03:53 – Benefits of the longer time frame charts

04:50 – The short time frame charts – what to expect

06:00 – Work out what suits you

07:00 – To Summarise

What is the best timeframe Forex chart for you to trade? Let's talk about that and more right now.

Hi Forex traders, Andrew Mitchem here, The Forex Trading Coach and welcome to video and podcast number 196. In today's video and podcast I'm going to be discussing a topic that I get asked almost daily.

Choosing the best time frame chart for you

It's all about choosing the right timeframe chart for you to trade. You see, it's an issue that confuses a lot of Forex traders and it's easy to understand why that is the case because when you go through your charts, depending on the platform that you use, there are a group of different timeframe charts to use and depending on what's happening on which particular currency pair, they can all show different directions.

Some are looking like the price is moving up and they're sort of green candles and others you could see the price is moving down and they're red. It causes a lot of confusion for people.

The merits of various time frame charts

What I want to do to help you is to just run through just briefly some of the merits of different timeframe charts and how you can best decide what works for you, because ultimately trading successfully is all about what works for you. Let's go through that, starting with the longer timeframe charts. Now if you use MT4/Meta Trader 4, you'll know that the monthly charts are the longest timeframe chart available to trade.

Now monthly chart is quite an unusual chart in that you have to wait a long, long, long time on most currency pairs before you get a really good trade setup. Now if you trade like me on the close of a candle, it's quite easy because basically you've got 12 times a year that you can go and look at your monthly charts and you think, is there a setup, yes or no. Monthly charts probably are not really for everybody because you have to wait a long time between trades. You have to accept that the trade's going to remain open for a long, long time as well or potentially for a long time. I'd probably say to most people, just leave the monthly charts.

However, if you're quite prepared to leave trades open, see them sort of move into profit and back into maybe a loss and be prepared for that longer term hold that position. If that's you, absolutely go for it. A lot of people do come to me and they'll say, look, I'm just too busy with work or family, other commitments, to sort of be looking at charts all day and night. If that's you, then maybe the monthly charts are a good option for you.

Trading the Weekly charts

You come down to the next timeframe and that on most platforms would be a weekly chart.

That to me probably personally, is one of the longer timeframe charts that I trade and I also post on my membership site for my clients weekly trading suggestions. I also post monthly but we don't get too many good setups. Weekly of course, you get sort of four times, sometimes five, depending on the month, within the weekly charts, within the month to go and look at. I like weekly charts, I think they're great. If you look through all the different currency pairs you can quite often see, I generally post somewhere between about sort of one and four weekly charts in a week.

At the odd time there are none if everything's a little bit sort of flat and indecisive but most times there are some good setups there.